Rapture Cityscape
Sitemap --- --- --- Rapture, November 5 1946 - "One Man's Vision, Mankind's Salvation" : BSGianourmity.jpg CorrectedSkyboxWindowView.jpg Dedication.jpg FromMovie.jpg Cliffs.jpg Pointything.jpg showwhatreallywouldlooklike.jpg SellingRapture.jpg Officially "completed" on November 5, 1946 ? The date on the little Commemoration Display cases you see in various places in the game, but those only show a handful of towers (symbolic). Maybe the core of Rapture was completed by that date, and it began accepting immigrants, but then construction continued on the rest of the city taking several more years. Already existing would be the infra-structure to transfer down the huge mass of materials needed to build and fitout the city (dock adjacent to Lighthouse island). This would have been used to transfer luggage and large amounts of the possessions of arrivals (Bathyspheres could hardly serve this function). There must have been some Citizen's Residences operational at that time (not just the Monsenor Hotel). A city takes time and materials to build, and MONEY. Ryan would have got not just the richer people to fund construction and take ownership of properties (even being a billionaire, Ryan couldn't pay for something as large as a fraction of what the various pictures show). Additional people kept coming to Rapture through 1951, including new 'investors' (as well as additional money coming from existing Rapture inhabitant's worldly holdings being gradually sold off so as to maximize their monetary conversion.) If you look at a Rapture Timeline, you see that Ryan didn't completely disappear from surface contact till sometime around early 1952 (around when Lutwidge (SitS) sent him a complaint about the planned shipments of steel being left to rust). Ryan then would have been receiving steel until then (and other things you couldn't make in Rapture), making the completion date more like late 1951. There are multiple "Rapture: Established 1946" on posters around the city (in BioShock 2). Does one say Nov. 5. "Established" means 'sufficiently started'/ 'viable' - the cornerstone being laid?? Makes me wonder how disjoint the development staff was (on coordinating story details, etc...), and if they had anyone checking for discrepencies like this (and IF found it costs time/money to change the 3D asset, so the 'deciders' may have simply let it slide). --- --- --- Rapture Cityscape Diagram : * 'Street' ways interconnect different sections of the city (with their Metro trolley lines used for mass transit) * Scale on left edge show depth with Street level at about 600 feet. * Building heights stop at a depth of ~100 feet to avoid small Ice floes that got past Mt Ryan (which protects the City against icebergs which can extend many hundreds of feet down from the surface). * Concrete Foundations used to support buildings and other structures are dug into the seafloor sediment and imbedded in the bedrock. * Plazas/squares sit in middle of cluster of several taller High-Rise buildings (directly connected to them or by viaducts). They are at 'street' level (and often well above the seafloor). * Crosswise main Streets intersect in the Plazas to transfer traffic to other sections of the city, and other Street intersections elsewhere. * Atlantic Express lines run below the Street level in various directions connecting major plazas. * Hills/ridges have smaller buildings built into the contours. Many of the locations the player traveled thru in BS1/BS2 were sprawling complexes of connected buildings like this. * Underground tunnels and caverns used as a 'cheaper' construction technique for farms, manufacturing, industrial and warehousing facilities. * Perpendicular 'Streets' form blocks of low-rise shops and residences. * Secondary Metro trolley lines run independant of the 'Street' system, often following ridges and tunneling thru hills to remain relatively flat. * All buildings have a seafloor airlock for maintenance. * The Lighthouse Bathysphere descends thru a tunnel in Mt Ryan and then emerges to head to the Welcome Center. . . .